


The God of Cookery

by jedishampoo



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 07:42:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/582949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedishampoo/pseuds/jedishampoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sanzo Genjyo makes a living being brilliant at finance, but sometimes he has more in common with the guy who runs the noodle shop. Gojyo/Sanzo AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The God of Cookery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Despina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Despina/gifts).



**Title: The God of Cookery**

  
**Author's notes:** Er, realized I never posted this! It was written for [**despina_moon**](http://despina-moon.dreamwidth.org/) on the [**7thnight_smut**](http://7thnight-smut.dreamwidth.org/) comm (mwah dahling). The title of this was unashamedly stolen from the Stephen Chow movie, but just the title; the plot, such as it is, is all my own. Thanks to my beta, [**whymzycal**](http://whymzycal.dreamwidth.org/)!  
  


**The God of Cookery**  
  
  
The cramped side street with its unhygienic-looking alleys and shops was unfamiliar, so Genjyo Sanzo took it. If his lunch ran long, he didn't give a shit, and if his boss gave a shit, she could go suck it for all Sanzo cared.  
  
She hated him, anyway, or life hated him, or something. Sanzo knew this because she'd been calling him “Genjyo,” tossing his seldom-used given name at him all morning like it was her temporary favorite toy. “Listen to me, Genjyo, sugar” she'd say, and “Genjyo will be happy to coordinate that team, won't you, Genjyo?”  
  
That led to the other thing: she'd refused to send him to London tomorrow to meet with Royal Bank. She'd sent Sharak instead. Sanzo would be cursed to stay behind in Hong Kong to deal with the domestic paperwork from whatever agreement Sharak reached. And he was pissed about it.  
  
A round, flushed face topped with thinning hair parted the smoke and steam of a street vendor's grill and shoved itself too close to Sanzo for his comfort.  
  
“Pissing shrimps! Best pissing shrimps for a golden boddhisattva!” the face called.  
  
Sanzo crooked his lip and brushed the man off with a jerk of his hand, and the man disappeared back into the smoke.  
  
It wasn't that Sanzo loved London in particular, or hated Hong Kong. He just worked better alone and on the move, and was at his worst in the home office, directing teams of number-jockeys.  
  
Sanzo's expression warned off a sweaty woman waving turkey legs around like traffic flags; he could see her still staring at him as he strode past and snapped a quick right down a crooked alley. The whistle that followed him could have been directed at anything.  
  
The number-jockey curse was only the newest development in the string of bad luck Sanzo had lately endured. It was a direct result of last week's failure of the Hyumaoh Company, one of Sanzo's endorsement projects.  
  
He'd been stupid. Softhearted, even. Hyumaoh had seemed a solid, family-owned company, and the daughter'd had a good work ethic and the chops to take over the company from her aging father. So Sanzo had backed them. But that time he'd let his intuition — only one of his birthrights and usually reliable — mislead him into confusing _hardworking_ with _profitable._  
  
Orange Eagle Group LTD had nearly massacred Hyumaoh in last week's takeover, and the deal had lost enough of Ten-Kay Co's investment money to make Director Bosatsu call him _Genjyo_ and ground him indefinitely.  
  
Sanzo turned down another alley, wanting to pinch his nose at the piss-smell that pervaded this alley like it did all alleys in big cities by the sea. The alley was empty, of living people at least, and Sanzo settled for a more dignified nose-scrunching that doubled as a working snarl. He laid his palm over the special pocket sewn into the breast of his suit jacket.  
  
“I have a smartphone, and I'll use it,” he said. A stray dog slunk off and the other denizens of the alley got the picture, and thus Sanzo walked on, unmolested.  
  
The stinking alley spewed him onto another unfamiliar street, and he had to dodge a river of other men wearing business suits. The street was lined with bustling food stalls. Sanzo's stomach grumbled at him. He wanted lunch but he had no wish to fight for space at a counter. Nor did he want rice or dim sum, and the surprise-stuffed beef balls were out of the question.  
  
He spotted a noodle stand that was free of patrons and angled his steps toward it. Lucky Five! Noodle!, it was called.  
  
Three's your lucky number, kiddo, his father used to say.  
  
Bullshit. It's five, his mother would say. His mother, who had died the stupidest fucking death it was possible to die.  
  
Sanzo had never reconciled with it. Sometimes he was irrationally angry with her for letting herself die in such a way, and sometimes after he'd had more than a few beers he'd pity her, expiring alone and face-down in a few inches of muddy water.  
  
“Just my luck this place'll suck,” Sanzo said, low but aloud, as he shook off the memory and sat at one of the noodle shop's stools. One of the few people he liked talking to was himself.  
  
It was a good thing because the stall was not only empty of customers, the proprietor was nowhere to be seen. Sanzo could hear a bustle and a clinking behind a canvas drape, and he coughed.  
  
After another minute or so he said “fuck it” and started to stand. Just then the canvas rustled and a tall man with hair dyed a startling red oozed out from behind it. The man's eyes widened when he saw Sanzo, like he'd never seen a fucking customer before.  
  
 _Startlingly ugly is more like it,_ Sanzo thought to himself untruthfully. He was more than familiar with being stared at for his hair, and he fixed his glare somewhere to the left of the man's head.  
  
“Finally,” he said.  
  
“Hey, gorgeous. What'll ya have?” the man said and grinned at him. He looked like a no-gooder. He looked like a layabout. He was too good-looking to trust, his mother would have said.  
  
“You're too forward,” Sanzo said.  
  
The man just shrugged his lanky shoulders, a motion so laconic that Sanzo would have sworn time slowed down for a breather.  
  
“Not a denial, man,” he said, then raised his palms at Sanzo's deepening scowl. “Fine, fine! But you need a lucky noodle. I can tell.”  
  
“How do you know?” Sanzo asked before he could stop himself.  
  
The man shrugged again. “I just know. C'mon, tell me what ya want. I can make anything.”  
  
“Anything?” Sanzo raised an eyebrow to match his up-curled lip.  
  
“Try me.”  
  
“Tch,” Sanzo said, and thought for a moment. “Bean-thread noodle. Carrot. Artichoke hearts. Mayonnaise, sweet relish, gluten pork, lily buds. No meat in the broth.”  
  
“Gotcha,” the man said, and turned —  
  
— as Sanzo waited a few more beats, waited in vain for the weirdo-no-gooder-unsettlingly-good-looking idiot to cry out in disgust or deny the availability of half the requested ingredients. But he just ladled some broth into a pot and started to cook, whistling as he did it.

“Sure you heard me?” Sanzo said.

“Yep. Bean, carrot, chokes, mayo, relish, lily, Buddha's-piggy-style. The luck won't cost ya any extra, gorgeous.”

Sanzo _tch_ ed again.

“So I'm friendly today. Not a crime, man.”

Still, the man stopped chatting and went back to whistle-cooking. Sanzo would have left anyway, but he wanted the satisfaction of pointing out that his noodle bowl had something missing or, more likely, tasted like shit. His stomach bitched again, probably in terror of the bizarre mixture he'd requested.

The man worked fast without seeming to; in just a couple of minutes, he plopped a steaming bowl in front of Sanzo. He smiled again, showing white teeth, and leaned his elbows on the counter.

“C'mon. Taste and tell me what a genius I am.”

“Back off and stop staring at me,” Sanzo griped.

“Geeze, you're a grumpy sumbitch, ain't ya? Fine, fine!” The man backed off, flailing his hands in denial of his assholishness, and turned around to wipe down his grill.

Sanzo picked up his chopsticks and poked them in the soup. Yeah, so there were lily bud slices and what looked like artichokes and pink pork — the gluten, because for some reason Sanzo had retained his father's Buddhist, vegetarian eating habits — and bits of pickle and carrot were arranged across the top. The mayo would take a taste-test to detect. Sanzo took a deep breath and guided some noodles to his mouth, then slurped them down.

His stomach made another noise: to his surprise, this time it was a rather joyful one. There was mayonnaise in the soup, and damned if it didn't actually taste good.

“I don't believe it,” Sanzo mumbled.

“Right? Right? It's my personal magic, man.” The man was leaning over the counter again. Sanzo found he didn't care. The sensation of eating tasty food for once was worth the minor defeat. He lifted the bowl to his chin and brought more noodles to his mouth.

“Mmmph,” Sanzo said.

The man was still watching. He stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth in what looked like a smug, habitual gesture. “I'm Gojyo,” he said. “What's your name, Mister?”

“Nub yer bidnss,” Sanzo said around his food.

Gojyo gave another one of his time-slowing shrugs. “Maybe. So what d'ya do?”

“Fug'off,” Sanzo said, pouring the last of the broth down his throat.

“Riiight. Well, then,” Gojyo said, dragging the empty bowl smugly across the counter — somehow he managed to make the gesture look smug, anyway.

Sanzo was turned half away and was slapping some bills on the counter when one of Ten-Kay Co's under-est of the underlings trundled by; he spotted Sanzo and bowed. “Honored Account Manager Sanzo! I wish you a successful day,” he said, nodding like his head was on a string.

“Yeah. Enjoy your lucky day, Mister _Sanzo_ ,” Gojyo said, licking the corner of his lip again.

“Eh,” Sanzo said, and walked off without another word. He lit a postprandial cigarette and headed back toward the office, enjoying being in a merely disgruntled mood rather than a downright piss-poor one.

Director Bosatsu met him as he walked into Ten-Kay's lobby.

“Sudden change of plans, Genjyo-honey,” she said.

***

A few days later, Sanzo disembarked back ... home, he guessed he could call it, at Hong Kong International Airport. He endured the usual customs dispute over his passport and his variegated citizenship and found a car to take him to the city center. As soon as he got in the car, he rolled down the windows and lit a smoke, feeling a bit lightheaded after ten hours sans nicotine. Once he'd gotten that fix taken care of, he was still hungry and he had questions, but there was one place he could take care of both.

Thing was, Sanzo hadn't even known something was wrong until it hadn't been wrong anymore. It had taken his life being better than usual for him to notice, and it all seemed to lead back to the noodle guy. Was it coincidence, or was this Gojyo some sort of ... person like himself? Sanzo met so few of them. Not that he necessarily wanted to associate with no-gooders.

Guy seemed to be a decent cook, at least. London was a perfectly fine place, very multinational and cosmopolitan, but what most places in the West considered Chinese food was always slightly off, just enough wrong to be unsatisfying.

In the car he received a text from Director Bosatsu. _my darling Sanzo! meet me for drinks. kou's at seven,_ it said.

“Shit,” Sanzo said. Last time he'd had drinks with the Director to celebrate a profitable deal, she'd tried to shove her hands down his pants. He'd escaped, and the next day she'd been as apologetic as her position, personality, and hangover would allow.

“I swear I normally only go for pussy,” she'd said.

“You can have my share,” Sanzo had told her.

“Ha! I knew it,” she'd said.

Sanzo hadn't bothered with her assumptions; he just didn't do sex with anyone but himself, except very rarely and only briefly. That was all that was necessary. Sanzo had too much consciousness of his surroundings to allow himself otherwise. Plus sex brought with it a whole social labyrinth that he'd never really learned to navigate, though he did know that you never slept with the boss.

He didn't even really want to do drinks with the boss, but that was a definite part of the job. Sanzo grunted and described the street he wanted to the driver.

“Ah. Street of Tuesday Afternoon's Sun,” the driver said.

“Whatever,” said Sanzo. He was crap with directions, and half the back streets only had local names, anyway.

Regardless, the driver dropped him off at the right place. Sanzo paid him, along with a little extra to deliver his bag to the doorman at his apartment building.

Sanzo wasn't worried about his belongings. He'd had a remarkable streak of good luck the last few days. Royal Bank had agreed to every deal Sanzo proposed, at several tenths higher than the standard rates, even.

Of course there had been one wrinkle he'd had to iron, much as he hated having to bother with such shit. It'd been one of those old English ghosts, the headless knight-type, that'd been sicced on the Chief Financial Officer's wife. Still, the curse signature had been strangely familiar and pure China in origin.

Sanzo had noticed the malevolent spirit at dinner. Damned thing had known he'd seen it, too, and tried to run her home with a sick headache. That was what had really pissed Sanzo off, made him follow her to the ladies' room. Mrs. Brightforth never even screamed when he caught her arm and shoved his phone in her face, scrolling the words of the sutra. And they never spoke about it afterwards.

Taking time to take care of the minor annoyance had worked in his favor, anyway. Mr. Brightforth had been so pleased to have his wife all bright-eyed and happy again, he'd have agreed to just about anything. Lucky.

It was late afternoon and on Tuesday-Whatever Street, and the stalls and shops glowed dirty yellow in the slanting sunlight. There were fewer suits and more regular people milling about, getting ready for the dinner rush, pounding meat and pounding clouds of flour into the air for the evening's bread and buns. It only took a couple of minutes for Sanzo to find Lucky! Five Noodle! again. As before, it was deserted, devoid even of the red-headed cook.

Sanzo sat. He coughed. Soon Gojyo rustled through the canvas-flap door, and his eyes widened when he saw Sanzo. “Oi! Sanzo. How was London, old chap, what?” he said, in passable English.

Whatever Sanzo had been about to say, he was surprised into amending his greeting. “How the hell did you know where I was?”

Gojyo laughed like a dumbass. “Hey! I can read the papers, Mister Business Section.”

“Hn. You read?” Sanzo said. He tapped the counter. “Or you cook?”

“I do it all. Whaddya want?” Gojyo asked, tossing a towel over his shoulder and assuming a pose that was more Mister January than Mister Noodle.

“Soba. Smoked gouda. Sweet pepper, konbu dashi, extra wasabi, green curry. Durian seeds, cashews.” This was a test, of sorts, one Sanzo'd invented on the plane. He probably would have been better served drinking until he was insensate. Just because he liked things didn't mean they should be mixed together.

Gojyo merely raised an eyebrow at the bizarre request. “The goddess's howling orgasm, add smoked gouda? Your lucky day, guy. That's my specialty.”

“Hn,” Sanzo said. There Gojyo was, talking about luck again. Sanzo wanted to ask him— Damn, he hated to be delicate. But one just didn't talk about Things with just anyone. It led to ridicule, more questions, and more hassle in a life that was already more complicated than he liked.

Gojyo turned his back and his wok sizzled with konbu broth. He bent to reach under his counter for something Sanzo couldn't see. As he started chopping the whatever-it-was, he shifted from foot to foot, wiggling his ass in his tight jeans from side to side, like he was dancing to his own personal soundtrack.

Sanzo looked away, anywhere. Huh. He hadn't noticed the pornographic calendar pinned to the door last time he'd been here. It was slightly arousing, which meant it'd been too long since he'd had sex with himself.

“I see you got no monkey with ya this time,” Gojyo said over his shoulder as he cooked.

“The fuck?” Sanzo said, surprised again.

Gojyo jerked his chin and gestured at his own tee-shirt clad shoulder. “The one on your back.”

Even said in Cantonese, that was an Americanism, one Sanzo had heard from his father. Probably. His father had said a lot of silly things. “I don't do drugs,” he said, gritting his teeth.

“You know what I'm talkin' about, Mister Saaanzo.”

It was as good an opening as any to getting the information Sanzo wanted, without revealing himself or looking stupid.

“Why don't you tell me?” Sanzo said.

“You telling me you don't know?”

Sanzo pressed his fingertips into the counter until his nails hurt. “What did you do?” he ground out.

“Eh? Eh?” Gojyo just laughed. “I'm just lucky. Cards, sex, cooking. Sometimes I share it with deserving folks. I'm the streak or I break it. You're a third of the way there, ya know?” He waggled his eyebrows.

“Stop it. I'm tired of playing games.”

Gojyo turned and clinked a brimming, steaming bowl of ... what Sanzo had ordered onto the counter and slid it over to him, somehow managing not to spill any of it. He wound his hands into his long, sweaty red hair, twirling it up into a knot.

“Listen. Sex and cooking aren't games to me, man. And cards I'm merely great at. Life's too short to fuck around. Maybe I got small gifts that ain't worth much, but I use 'em when I feel like it. So maybe you had kind of a _thing_ hanging around. Maybe I helped you out.”

“I didn't ask you to do anything!”

“Yeah, but you did ask for the food. You gonna eat it or not?”

“Hn. I suppose.” Sanzo had gotten answers, of a sort. He released the wooden counter, which had been threatening his fingers with splinters, and snapped his chopsticks. They split perfectly evenly. His mother would have clapped and laughed at such a sign of good fortune. _Stupid, stupid._

He snipped up a durian seed and popped it into his mouth. It was perfectly cooked, without any of that bitter raw flavor it could have had. He tested a noodle. Shit, it was good.

Gojyo again leaned his elbows onto the counter. He lit a cigarette and watched Sanzo eat. “Look. Would you believe me if I told you I had a magic knife?”

“Nnn,” Sanzo said around a mouthful of noodles.

“Well, I do. I had this job once, see, cleaning the temple in Guangdou Court?” He gestured with his cigarette hand in some random direction, but when Sanzo only rolled his eyes, he continued. “Anyway, I was dusting these old-ass shelves and broke this pot of 'Many-Many Good Luck Knife.' Some artifact thingy. And now the Many-Many Good Luck Knife is mine until I die.”

Sanzo swallowed a noodle and started plucking cashews out of the broth. “Hope they fired your ass.”

“Ha!” Gojyo laughed, showing a set of surprisingly straight and white teeth. “Usually people call bullshit when I tell my origin story.”

“I didn't say it wasn't bullshit. What?” Gojyo had narrowed his eyes and was staring off, over Sanzo's shoulder. His lips thinned and he looked so serious that Sanzo turned to see what it was. He saw nothing, just the usual crowd of street people going about their lives. He didn't even see the usual spirits going about the business of being dead. That was strange, but not unwelcome. Perhaps just lucky.

He turned back and Gojyo was shaking his head and taking a long, thoughtful-looking drag on his smoke. He smoked those shitty Hi-Lites, Sanzo noticed. He'd found himself noticing things about Gojyo that eluded him in most of his dealings with other people. The dealings that didn't involve finance, that was.

“Nothin'. Just thought some guy was standing there, staring at me funny. Actually, looked like he might've been staring at you. Must be that pretty yellow hair. How'd you get that, anyway? Looks natural.” Gojyo's expression had settled back into its usual leering sort of dumbassery.

Sanzo didn't answer right away. He took one more look behind him and saw nothing. Then he drank the last drop of broth from the bowl and dropped it onto the counter. He reached down to grab his wallet — his phone pocket was warm, huh — and plucked out a couple of small bills. The food was cheap for how good it was. Magic knife his ass.

“I don't tell my origin story to anybody,” he said as he tossed the bills at Gojyo.

Gojyo crumpled them up and shoved them into his jeans pocket. “You know how to say thanks?”

“You're supposed to thank the customer,” Sanzo said and lit a cigarette of his own as he walked off. He let himself smile a little when he was sure that Gojyo couldn't see.

***

Customs at JFK was quicker and easier than customs in Hong Kong, surprisingly. The Americans had a reputation for paranoia, but blond half-Asian citizens who spoke with a slight British accent didn't seem to ping any of their Homeland alarms.

That meant Sanzo could get through the terminal that much more quickly, find his driver (GENJYO, said the driver's sign, like they had no fucking clue which was his given name and which wasn't), and get outside for a smoke. He'd lit up by the time he was only halfway through the revolving doors at Ground Transportation.

The driver, a thin girl with enormous breasts and long black hair in two sleek ponytails, halted in the act of stowing his bag in the back of the limo.

“Sir, I'm very sorry, but smoking is not allowed in the vehicle,” she said.

Sanzo rested his ass against the car's side and crossed his legs. He had no fear of dirtying his suit. The car was spotless.

“Then we'll have to wait here until I'm done,” he told her.

The girl, expressionless, shut the trunk with a smooth click. “I've been told to get you to the office as soon as possible, Mr. Genjyo.”

“It's Sanzo. Don't I get my room and dinner first? The meeting's just that urgent, huh?”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Sanzo.”

Sanzo just stared at her as he took a long and enjoyable drag of his smoke.

She betrayed her consternation by fussing her fingers through her hair. Finally she sighed.

“Just please roll down the window, Mr. Sanzo?”

Some may have called Sanzo ill-tempered, but usually not ill-bred. He rolled down the window all the way. The night air stank of seawater and a day's worth of exhaust.

Still, the haste was curious. Toudai New York was one of Sanzo's better American accounts, one of the steadiest performers in the market. They didn't require a lot of cajoling or babysitting, and Sanzo liked it that way.

At least, they hadn't required it until yesterday. Sanzo had been relaxing, as he usually did on Sundays, drinking beer and watching the karaoke championships and contemplating a trip out for noodles for some ungodly reason, when his door had buzzed. Director Bosatsu had sent the building supervisor to fetch him, since he'd turned his own phone off.

Sanzo cursed and went out onto the balcony to smoke and give her a call.

“Dai Jackson called,” the Director said, and Sanzo could hear her taking a sip of something before she continued. “Says if you're not in Manhattan by Tuesday morning at eight, he's transferring his accounts to fucking Orange Eagle.”

“Them again?” Sanzo asked.

In a somewhat bizarre sight, a tangerine-colored kite flapped past his forty-third-floor balcony. Sanzo looked down along the string but couldn't see what kind of idiot was flying it.

“You know anyone over there?” the Director asked.

“Nobody important.” The kite flapped on, diving its cheerful way toward some power lines.

“Huh. Well, suddenly you're Dai's number-one important person and videoconference won't do. They want to talk face-to-face.”

“Guess I'm flying to Papa's homeland, then,” Sanzo said.

He heard another sip on the other end of the connection. “What was it you said your father did?”

“I never did.” Sanzo was nearly the exact opposite of what Benjamin “Koumyou” Sanzo had been, and that was all that mattered. “E-mail me the pertinent information, O Honored Director, if you please.”

“Yeah. Ciao.” Then the Director had hung up.

Sanzo had reviewed the information on the plane, so all he had to do during the drive was smoke and watch out the window as Manhattan grew closer. The limo's driver must have been banking on the traffic, which was a snarl even at eight in the evening. Still, she guided the limo smoothly if narrowly through the mass of honking cars at the Midtown Tunnel to the pass lane, then timed her drive so she could glide through the lights at the slim tail-end of every yellow.

People milled along the sidewalks, heading out for the evening, and a few lost souls skittered by, as busy as their living counterparts. But the portico in front of Toudai's skyscraper was deserted except for building security. The driver wound the car through the narrow C of pavement, stopped, and opened the door for Sanzo.

He exited and stubbed his cigarette — his third — out in the waiting, skinny-necked receptacle. “See you. Thanks,” he said.

She shook her head. “I am to escort you upstairs. There, um. There will be food available,” she said with a small smile.

“Fine,” Sanzo said. She left the car to the care of the guard, and Sanzo followed her into the elevator.

As soon as he entered the Toudai boardroom, he knew something was wrong. He couldn't see it right away; in fact, he couldn't see what it was at all. He'd been there before and thus had a comparison-memory: there were the big windows looking out onto the glimmering nighttime city, the wallpaper with its businesslike pinstripe. The long, oval glass-topped table was sparsely populated with four seated suits, all with American faces pasted atop them. Along one wall sat a white-shrouded table lined with what looked like salami sandwiches.

The kid caught Sanzo's eye, the short one with overlong brown hair. He was sitting next to Dai Jackson, and he had big, round brown eyes that he never even turned in Sanzo's direction.

Sanzo also saw that there were no ashtrays on the table. He sighed. He'd heard that most American offices and public spaces were going smoke-free, like the people's unhealthy eating habits weren't going to kill them anyway. He would never have expected at that moment to wish for some good street noodles and more casual company, but suddenly he did anyway. A bloom of warmth unfurled in his belly, choosing an inopportune time to do so. Annoyed at the physical and mental distraction, Sanzo forced himself back into babysitting mode. He tried not to frown too much with his greeting.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said. Everyone except the huge-eyed kid nodded and murmured some greeting or another, and Jackson waved him to a seat. He was wearing an uncustomary scowl on his square, dark-skinned face.

“That there is Gordon Song, representing Orange Eagle,” Jackson said, pointing at the kid. Song stared straight ahead, seemingly at nobody.

“Why's he involved in our discussions?” Sanzo wanted to know.

“I'll get to that soon,” Jackson continued. “So. Yesterday, a third of our assets, all relating to industries found through Ten-Kay Co, were frozen. We've been making goddamned calls, but nobody has any goddamned answers.”

That hadn't been in the information Director Bosatsu had sent. Hadn't she fucking noticed? It wasn't his job to notice shit like that. “Don't you have data analysts? Anything can be traced,” Sanzo said.

Jackson snorted. “Yeah, and they can't trace it. We've kept it quiet. Top secret, even. But the news'll leak out soon and ruin us in the next trading day. And there's no reason for it that we can see! No strikes, no computer shutdowns, nothing illegal going on, no data traffic relating to us in any overseas government offices. Nothing. Meanwhile, production and trading are at a standstill.”

“So you called me,” Sanzo said. He laced his fingers together and leaned forward over them, staring at the table, letting the pattern of its smooth wood grain order his thoughts amidst the chaos.

“Song requested it.”

Sanzo glanced up at that, and the way Song continued to not stare at him was becoming downright creepy. Kid had a weird aura, something shimmering about him, through him, just out of eyesight, almost out of even Sanzo's preternatural vision. Shimmering like golden bars that were revealed only in quick flecks as the light caught his eyes ...

Song spoke. “Mister Sanzo, as a representative of Orange Eagle LTD, we would like you to know that we have discovered a fatal security flaw in Toudai Company's accounts with Ten-Kay. We have exploited that flaw. If you are unable to discover its origin, we have offered to assist Toudai Company with a full recovery at our expense.”

Jackson jumped to his feet and shouted at Song. “You didn't tell me you'd caused it! Asshole. You said you could just help us fix this if we had to.”

“That's blackmail,” Sanzo said, very quietly. “Isn't that illegal here?”

Song continued, his face still expressionless. His monotone sounded like it wasn't his own, like it didn't belong in his young body. “If you can discover it by tomorrow evening, we will release all funds and make full recompense. Prove you deserve your reputation and to have these accounts.”

“Still blackmail,” Sanzo said.

Jackson was still shouting. “I'll— I'll— I'll call the SEC. I'll call the fucking FBI. I'll call Interpol. I'll—” Jackson paused for breath and made a gurgling noise, like he couldn't remember who else to call. He opened and closed his beefy fingers into clawed half-fists as if just barely not strangling Song himself, right there. “I'll— I'll have you arrested—”

“That will be impossible.” Song stood and looked at Sanzo full-on for the first time, and except for those flecks of barred life, his eyes were as wide and dead as digital recording devices. “I will be in touch. Sayonara, Sanzo-Sama!”

The last three words were said in pitch-perfect Japanese and a sing-song voice that didn't correspond to the deadness of the rest of his demeanor. Then the shimmer about him flared like an enraged aura. Sanzo reached for his phone without even thinking about it, but before he even had time to pull it from his breast pocket, Song was gone. He was a blur as he ran from the room.

Sanzo knocked his chair over in his haste to follow, but still he was too slow; Song was nowhere to be seen in the hallway, and the elevator lights indicated that the car was sitting on the bottom floor, nowhere near them on the fiftieth. How had he disappeared?

“God, he's fast,” Jackson said, huffing behind Sanzo.

“Supernaturally, even,” Sanzo said. Such a powerful golden light ... had everyone else seen it? How had they not seen it? People were too moronic to trust their own senses.

“Probably on drugs. He looked spacey.” Jackson shook his head. “Still need this shit cleaned up, more than ever.”

“I'll get to the bottom of it,” Sanzo said. He'd find Song, no doubt. But first there was one thing. “But if you don't think we're worthy of your trust, then it's not worth my time to bother. Tell me now.”

Jackson bowed his head, a weak bargaining position but a good one for an apology. “No, I'm sorry. I don't even know what happened. We panicked, and Song talked like you'd know what was going on and understand. It seemed like the right thing at the time, and now it just seems ... freaky.”

Jackson had possibly been under some kind of glamour, then. Not a curse, because Sanzo would have seen it. Of course, he hadn't been able to see his own.

He'd hoped that last week's whatever-it-was had been random. Some passing asshole he'd pissed off in some way had set a bad-luck juju on him and forgotten about it. Now Sanzo suspected that wasn't the case — that someone was fucking with him. Why else the smarmy Japanese honorific? And it seemed to have something to do with Orange Eagle. Their companies' interests were similar, but they had never really been in direct competition. Was he being as paranoid as any American, to think someone there had a plan, a vendetta of some kind against him personally?

Song would have answers. Sanzo didn't want to wait for Song to call or wait for the call to be traced; shit, he might even just e-mail. And Sanzo wanted to take care of this business himself. He looked around, between the air and through it. The aura of Song's golden chi was just the faintest bit visible if Sanzo stared at any one place long enough, though it was fading quickly. And it had a definite shape, a trail, toward the center of the building. Which was a shitty place for an elevator.

Jackson spoke again. “I trust you to get him. That's what you do — er, right?”

Sanzo was startled out of his atmosphere-inspection. “What? Don't you have police for that?”

Jackson gave him a weak half-smile and showed Sanzo his open palms. “Well, I figure you'd do a better job. I've heard things ...”

Now, that was annoying. Sanzo waited a few moments before speaking. “We'll see,” he said at last. He excused himself with a nod and went to the elevator.

Of course, the trail had disappeared completely once Sanzo was in the lobby. It was like Song had gone up or something, instead of down or out. Shit. Sanzo knew he'd have to do an Internet search, download a spell or something to use find Song.

The driver girl and the car were waiting outside. The girl yanked a phone from her ear and hung up a call as he appeared; he also noticed the cigarette half-ground out under her shoe.

“Do I have a hotel?” he asked her.

“Yes, sir. The Hilton. I can take you there.”

Sanzo nodded at the phone dangling from her side. “Who do you work for?”

She straightened. “Toudai. Only Toudai.”

“Good,” Sanzo said.

Still, he didn't call the Director until he was standing outside the hotel, in the street, alone. He gave her a quick and dirty and quiet rundown of the situation, at least the business end of it, barely pausing through her intermittent and increasingly filthy curses.

“I'll get Ling To-Zhao on it,” she said at last. “He's good at finding trails, and he's familiar with those accounts.”

That was something else Sanzo hadn't known. Ling was the one who'd told that Gojyo guy his name, that day in the street. So many weird coincidences lately, and he couldn't quite piece them all together. There was no way, at least, that Gojyo was tied up in this. “You do that, O Honored One. I'll be here through at least tomorrow evening.”

“You gettin' laid?”

“Fuck, no,” Sanzo said. What was the preoccupation with his sex life lately? “I'm ... coordinating the efforts to clear things up on this end.”

“Well, get laid after you find and personally take care of Song, then.”

Sanzo detected a smile in her voice and suppressed his curse. “Don't they have police for that?” he said, for the second time that evening.

“You would know what to do with him, though. I'm not stupid, Sanzo.”

“Shit,” Sanzo said, unable to hold that one in. Was his existence a fucking book for everyone to read? He'd meant for his reputation to be economic. If ghosts weren't so foolish and nosy, and if everybody alive didn't have their idiotic spiritual problems all the time, he'd never have to do a thing.

“It's from your mom's side of the family,” his father had told him once he'd been old enough to understand. “It's in your blood. Your ancestors totally kept this countryside clean for centuries.”

Not clean enough, or at least everything he'd inherited was ineffective on human bullshit: his father had been gunned down in a raid by the local Communist warlord. Apparently their little organic commune hadn't been quite leftist enough for the government. And his mother had been years dead, long poisoned by the organicness of their unextraordinary lives.

Sanzo had never really wanted to be extraordinary, but he had wanted to be different from his family. To do his own thing. He'd even taken his in-his-blood birthright and learned how to update it, use it in the modern world, anything to make it more bearable.

At least that would help him now. He could use his own magic technology to clear the hotel's wi-fi of any tracers or spyware that could interfere with his searches. He went up to his room to fetch his laptop.

***

Sanzo still hadn't found Song by the following morning, however. He'd spent a couple hours searching online to find the right locater spell and several more on his feet, walking the streets in the quietest New York hours with his phone held up like a fucking metal detector, waiting for it to beep. He'd never caught more than the faintest signal, and by the time he'd found a cab or train or even run on his own two legs to investigate it, it would have disappeared or would merely be some idiot ghost forgetting its place and causing trouble. Sanzo had zapped all those with the Maten just because he was in a bad mood and just because he could.

Song's case had looked like a possession or a compulsion of some kind, something the Seiten could clear up. If only Sanzo could find him.

The Director called at eight-thirty, once he'd already showered and re-dressed in his suit to go to Toudai. “We've got it,” she said, sounding like she'd gotten just as much sleep as Sanzo had, which was to say, none. She told him what they'd found about the financial end of things — basically, not their fault — then asked, “What did you nail on your end?”

“Nothing,” Sanzo had to say. To any meaning of the word _nail_. “Yet. A lead here or there.” He didn't elaborate.

“Hmm. Well, I'll send you the particulars for the corporate boys. Put them on a thumb drive, 'cause I don't trust Dai's connection.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Sanzo said. Like she had any business sounding disappointed in him for doing what he was paid to fucking do, which was babysit his accounts.

When he arrived at Toudai's office he didn't say anything to Jackson about his inability to find Song, either, only shook his head at Jackson's raised eyebrows. Jackson looked like the Director had sounded and Sanzo wanted to punch something. Like he was suddenly responsible for every fucking thing, not just their companies' financial well-beings? Assholes, all of them. His father had always warned him not to let himself be exploited.

“Gotta watch out for Big Brother Government and Uncle Corporation,” his father had told him. “They'll take your soul, man.” Well, Sanzo had joined Uncle Corpy gladly, but what had his father expected when his will had directed for Sanzo to be educated at business school in Hong Kong? And who knew the old man had kept such a rich family back in Utah to pay for it?

They were all dead now, too. Sanzo gathered the suits back in the boardroom and Skyped the Director through so she could tell them what was up.

“The back door was a mole in your organization,” she said right away to the gathered men. She had dark circles under her eyes and looked like crap. Good. “Our search leads to someone called Kou Gyuu in your New Delhi division.”

“Ah. Seems like our sources also think that's where it started, yes,” Jackson said with an embarrassed cough, like his people had done a damned thing.

Next to Skype in was VP of International Growth from Orange Eagle LTD. Song had been an employee, yes, she said. But he'd been fired last week and was thus a rogue agent. Unfortunate that we don't recognize the name of the person you supposedly talked with. Many, many apologies, of course. Have your legal team contact ours. Ta, goodbye.

Sanzo hadn't been able to completely read the Orange Eagle exec, but he didn't think she was involved. And Song was still out there.

“We all good?” he asked Jackson when all that was over; nobody needed to know about the anonymous-probable-vendetta but himself.

“Yeah. Glad that's being taken care of, whatever it was,” Jackson said, shaking his head slowly. “Wonder how much OE'll pony up in recompense? Anyway, when we're up and running at full speed, I'd like to talk expansion again.”

“We'll do that,” Sanzo said. “Let me know if you hear from Song. You probably won't.”

“Will do.”

There were a few quick handshakes and then Sanzo could leave. As he exited the building yet again, his stomach gave a horrendously bitchy growl, and he realized that he hadn't eaten since the flight in. He thought of soba with durian seeds and gouda and he practically fainted under the portico. So maybe he'd dreamed about those noodles; was that a crime or anything? A line of chuckwagons was strung out front along Liberty Street, luring the early-lunchers. Sanzo ignored the offered limo and its new driver, and angled his steps toward the trucks. A familiar voice called out in an unfamiliar accent, audible even over the growing crowds.

“Oi! Sanzo! How ya doin'?” the voice said in a passable imitation of a New York twang.

“What. The fuck?” Sanzo eyed the column of trucks; first the red hair caught his eye, and then the familiar lack of any other diners. Gojyo the magic noodle-guy, impossibly, was manning a food truck in New York City. That was not a coincidence by any stretch of the imagination.

Gojyo grinned and waved him over, slinging a towel over his shoulder in a sultry gesture. Sanzo hated that he'd thought the word _sultry._ “Can't believe I'm seeing you here. Sight for sore eyes, I tell ya.”

Sanzo strode over and just barely managed to strangle the truck's counter instead of reaching inside to strangle Gojyo in broad daylight. “You have got to be fucking kidding me. It's you who's behind all this?”

Gojyo raised his palms and gave a slow, innocent blink. “I ain't behind nothing. This is total coincidence.”

“Now I'm calling bullshit,” Sanzo said, but he realized he'd loosened his grip. There was no way this guy had the power to deceive him, magic knife or not. “You following me?”

“Hell, no. My best buddy Hakkai owns this truck.” Gojyo leaned his elbows on the counter and pointed one finger up, at something over Sanzo's head. Sanzo glanced up without meaning to: Yummy! Eight Noodle! the sign said. “He just went on a late honeymoon and gave me a call, asking me to take it over for a few days. I'm heading home tomorrow.”

“People don't fly eight thousand fucking miles to pitch in at a food truck, no matter how good their friends are.”

“I did, man.”

“Huh,” Sanzo sighed. The world was entirely too weird for his tastes. But his intuition — inherited from some ancestor, though it had skipped a generation with his parents — was usually reliable, and told him it was true. Or true enough. A quick glance at his phone showed nothing. It was warm, like it'd been before, but he'd already deduced that was most likely the presence of Gojyo and his Thing. Sanzo wouldn't admit to any disappointment, either that he'd not been the draw or that he wasn't to have his mystery solved so easily.

And he wasn't sure he had any friends who would do that for him. Hell, he really didn't have any friends, none that didn't involve money in some way.

“S'true,” Gojyo was saying. “Not saying it ain't fucked up, seeing you here, but it's not a lie. S'not a hardship either. The seeing part. It's the listening to you part that's a pain in my ass.”

“Shit.” Sanzo slung a leg over one of the truck's attached stools and took a seat. He leaned his elbows on the counter like Gojyo had and dropped his forehead into his hands. He hadn't slept in over twenty-eight hours, either. “Give me the Goddess's thing. The one with the cashews.”

“Ehh? I thought you'd come up with something more challenging, but it's a good choice. Gouda?”

“God, yes.”

“Cool. You need it,” Gojyo said, pulling a knife seemingly out of thin air and waving it at Sanzo with a meaningful look. Then he turned and began chopping things with a soothingly regular _thup, thup, thup_ ing noise.

“Don't need any of your special ... stuff. I just need food.” Sanzo moved his fingers so he could look at the stools on either side of him without moving his head. “You never seem to have any other customers, either. Despite being an ... okay cook. How the hell do you make any money?”

“Hmm?” Gojyo shrugged. His bare shoulders in his customary white sleeveless shirt were a little sweaty and caught the light in interesting ways. Sanzo covered his eyes again, and Gojyo continued. “I get by. If people come to me, I figure they were supposed to, you know?”

“Hn.” Maybe the same was true for him. His father would have thought so, Buddhist that he'd been. Maybe Sanzo was just supposed to put out other people's fires all the time. Maybe that was the world's way of making sure he actually interacted with ... people. “You make enough money for cards?”

“Aww, you remembered.”

“Tch.” Sanzo couldn't dredge up a better put-down. But then, he was overtired. Weak. So weak that it seemed that in this case familiarity was doing the opposite of what it was reputed to do; rather than breeding contempt, the more time he spent around Gojyo, the more he felt ... normal.

The guy had nice fingers — long and thin and nimble. Or maybe Sanzo was just extremely overtired and shouldn't be watching them.

“So you workin'?”

“ ... Not anymore,” Sanzo mumbled.

“Ah.” Gojyo cooked, and Sanzo closed his eyes and let his other senses deal with the world for a bit. He felt warm cooking steam brush the backs of his hands; it smelled like curry. His mouth watered. The wok _swish, swish_ ed with hot food, and further away he could hear multilingual chatter and the honk of impatient drivers who never seemed to realize that laying on the horn had become pretty much meaningless here.

He looked up when he felt the bowl hit the counter in front of him. His chopstick snap was half-assed and imperfect — Mom would have been disappointed — but his first bite was Nirvana. He was a little more ill-bred than usual as he gobbled his food. But maybe it was even better tasting than last time.

As he ate his brain-fog cleared and his arms felt a little less heavy. His body was obviously pleased with even this scant nutrition. Gojyo wordlessly clunked a bottle of water on the counter. Sanzo nodded and drank it, and his dry veins were thankful for that, too.

“Was that a 'thank you,' Sanzo?” Obviously Gojyo couldn't be quiet for long.

“Nnn,” Sanzo said, and slurped the remaining broth from his bowl. He set it down and felt less shitty about the world in general. Everything would come together. Eventually. Nothing was worth the stress he'd endured over the last day or so.

“Eh? Eh?” Gojyo said, with a shit-eating, white-toothed grin.

“What'd you do to it?” Sanzo asked as he reached for his wallet.

Gojyo picked up the bowl. “Come on. Good Long Fortune All Your Day never hurt anyone.”

“... I suppose.”

Gojyo then waved off the money. “Say. Why don't you buy me a beer instead? I'll shut down early.”

Sanzo grunted to cover the fact that it sounded like a good idea. “How's your friend supposed to make money that way?”

“Eh? Hakkai'll understand. No big deal. You know, here we are, two fellow countrymen, far from home ...”

“I'm half-American. And I hate the bar scene,” Sanzo said, putting his wallet back, anyway.

“Well, that explains the hair a little, anyway.” Sanzo rolled his eyes at Gojyo's obvious glee at learning something personal. “I've been here in New Yawk before. I know this one place. Quiet. Chinese beer? I'll be good, unless ya don't want me to be.”

“You love to fuck with people, don't you? Or with just me?”

Gojyo pointed at him. “Bingo. You're just too serious, dude.”

“I have to be.” And there was more real truth at last. Confronting a social issue for once, rather than deflecting it, felt like breathing the air that normal people breathed. Sanzo thought for a moment. He really should get back to finding Gordon Song. Who would be found eventually, right? Hell, he would keep his phone on, in case Jackson called. “Fuck it. Yeah.”

“Ain't you cheerful? No, no, just kidding. Gimme a minute to lock up.”

***

The bar wasn't far — walking distance — and was snuggled in a side street between a Vietnamese grocery and a vintage clothing shop. But by the time they entered the bar, Sanzo had started thinking again about things he should be doing, rather than things he wanted to be doing. Then he heard the glorious strains of canned music and someone singing very badly.

“Karaoke?”

“Huh. Must be a new lunchtime thing here,” Gojyo said. He shrugged. “We can go to this other place I know—”

“No. This'll do,” Sanzo said, as shortly as he could.

Sanzo paid for the first round and the chatter between them was kept to a minimum, except for Sanzo's intermittent critique of the two performances it took to drink it. He bought the second round, too, and loosened his tie like a Japanese salaryman on Friday night.

Gojyo took a long pull from his beer. Sanzo watched as some of the condensation on his glass dripped onto his shirt. Onstage a slender man with a grating falsetto was further murdering some terrible new American pop song, “Here's My Number” or something like that.

Gojyo lit a cigarette and eyed Sanzo through his smoky exhalation. “So. You sing?”

“No. Yeah,” Sanzo said, relaxed by the beer, warm from Gojyo's knee that kept bumping, no, _pressing,_ against his under the table. Somehow he had gotten used to Gojyo's scent, too, some soapy thing that made Sanzo not mind socializing with ... social people.

After the third beer Sanzo decided he was relaxed enough to show all the motherfuckers how it was done. The bar had Chinese beer, but the karaoke deejay didn't stock any of the old Chinese standbys, so Sanzo removed his tie and made do with “You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling.”

When he was done, the cheers from the elderly Chinese and Korean ladies in the bar were just what he'd deserved. Gojyo, however, was laughing and clapping very slowly; the movement seemed to involve irony. Sanzo half-smiled even though he shouldn't have and hadn't meant to. Gojyo licked the corner of his lips when he saw that, or maybe his lips were just dry. It looked prurient, though, if the way Gojyo's eyes never left Sanzo were any indication. Sanzo wasn't displeased by such the suspicion.

“Shit, Sanzo,” Gojyo said, all fuckery again, when Sanzo returned to the table. “When I said listening to you was a pain in my ass, I wasn't kidding.”

“Fuck you,” Sanzo said genially, and lit a smoke to help his song-dry throat.

“Still like lookin'.”

“Fuck you again.”

“Man, good fortune is wasted on you. If I didn't have such a raging hard-on for you, I'd just stay the hell away.”

That time, Sanzo just drank instead of telling Gojyo off. It wasn't the alcohol making him grow so warm and ... and decentl- humored; three beers weren't enough to do that. It was Gojyo and his tone of voice. Perhaps Sanzo was vain, but reciprocal attraction wasn't entirely unpleasant.

The few episodes in his life that had involved “thoughts about being naked” and “other people” in the same space had usually included much more booze and hangover-sized regret. How else did people expose themselves to others so intimately, especially when the room was staying still enough to see all the spirits congregated in voyeuristic jealousy?

Except there were no ghosts here. Like in the Thursday — Tuesday — Whatever Alley. Sanzo glanced around and tried to remember if he'd ever seen the omnipresent spirits when he was around Gojyo, and couldn't remember seeing any.

“Karma's a bitch, but it happens whether you like it or not,” his father had told him.

Sanzo wasn't completely sold on “like it,” but he did quit looking for what plagued his everyday vision. He lit a cigarette and considered Gojyo, trying to be casual. Gojyo still looked like no good, but he — well, even an antisocial bastard like Sanzo had to admit that Gojyo was one of the few people who had come into Sanzo’s orbit without really requiring anything of him. In fact, he’d helped out a couple of times already, seeming to appear just when Sanzo needed help. Needed his particular help.

“Why haven't you stayed away?” Sanzo asked before he could feel too stupid to do so. That was another good reason to drink oneself numb before trying to do sex. The rejection might be softened.

Gojyo stubbed out his smoke and leaned forward to look Sanzo in the eye. “I'll tell you a coupla things, and you might not believe or like 'em. But one, you seem like a guy who could use some help doing what you do.”

Sanzo opened his mouth to retort, and Gojyo held up two fingers. Sanzo merely grunted and waited. Some things you couldn't continue to refute without looking stupid.

“Two, I don't always mess around when I say things. Sometimes they're true.”

Well, if Sanzo was a master of corporate nondisclosure, Gojyo was a master of friendly circle-talk. But Sanzo also hadn’t made his reputation by waiting around for things to happen, especially once he'd already made a decision about what he wanted. His body rejoiced by growing warm and heavy and expectant all over. Like a good deal was about to be made. But different.

“So where you staying?” Sanzo said, and held a short breath —

Gojyo rolled out a slow smile. “Can I say wherever you're staying? 'Cause I can say that.”

Sanzo exhaled. “Yeah. You can say that.”

Packing up their smokes and lighters and guzzling the dregs of their beers felt like leaving any other meeting, like Sanzo should reach for his briefcase. But then they stepped outside and Gojyo stepped closer. He stared at Sanzo's mouth and tucked him up against the brick vintage clothing storefront and kissed him. Sanzo tensed for a second before his body reminded him that he wanted this.

Gojyo’s kiss was slow, but his breath was urgent. Sanzo closed his eyes, and once that most overpowering sense had been nullified, he could focus on the firm press of Gojyo’s lips and the nudge of his tongue. Sanzo didn’t know why he’d always remembered kisses as slobbery, because these were encouragingly not.

“Mmmm, nice,” Gojyo murmured against his mouth.

When Sanzo realized that Gojyo’s hair was fine and slippery in his fingers and that he was fondling it, he opened his eyes. It was midafternoon and they were outside. Sanzo pushed Gojyo off.

“Not here,” Sanzo hissed, deliberately looking at the not-staring passersby instead of at Gojyo’s lips. Already his cock was tup-tupping with low-level arousal inside his trousers.

Gojyo stepped away and swiped his hand against his forehead. “This is New York. Nobody here gives a shit.”

“I don’t like voyeurs,” Sanzo said.

“Gotcha,” Gojyo said.

Temporarily deprived of better things to do with their mouths, they both dug out and lit smokes. They walked until their cigarettes were burnt down, and then Sanzo hailed a cab.

They spent the ride briefly discussing the singers at the bar, Sanzo desperately trying to make it not look like he was taking a man back to his hotel room for sex. As they walked through the hotel, Gojyo look around in admiration while Sanzo tried even harder to make it not look like he was taking a man back to his room for sex.

But inside his own body he was hyperaware of it, hyperaware of the faint taste left in his mouth from Gojyo's lips and tongue, the heated thump in his belly, the sweat that grew at his temples as he thought about Gojyo's hands on his body. On his cock.

At the door of his hotel room Gojyo chuckled. “That chick at the desk thought one of us was bringing a man-whore in for the day.”

“What? Shit,” Sanzo said. He pulled Gojyo inside and slammed the door shut.

Gojyo shook his arm loose and raised an eyebrow at him. “Just kidding! Man, you really like your privacy, don'tcha?”

Sanzo sighed. “Sometimes I feel like I've never really been alone my whole life.”

“Ah. Okay, man.” Gojyo said, in a less-joking tone. “Well, you sure you wanna do this? I mean, I do. I'm all hyped and ready to go.” Back to his irreverent ways, he pointed at the bulge of his cock in the front of his jeans.

Sanzo looked where Gojyo pointed. How some people would just say shit like that never failed to surprise him. He yanked off his own jacket with a movement he suspected was more awkward than passionate. He looked again at Gojyo's crotch.

“Well, I suppose we should get down to it, then.”

Gojyo stepped back and huffed through his teeth. “What, is it a chore? I swear, Sanzo, sometimes I still think I should ignore the call of karma and get the hell away from you, fast.”

_Why don't you?_ Sanzo restrained himself from asking. Instead he tossed his jacket onto the table next to his laptop. He wouldn't look at Gojyo as he admitted, “I'm shit at this kind of thing.”

Gojyo sighed and was silent for a moment. Then Sanzo felt Gojyo's hands cover his shoulders from behind. “Well, I'm good at it,” Gojyo finally said.

“So you said,” Sanzo said and started to turn. Gojyo yanked him the rest of the way around shoved him up against the table with his body. He leaned forward and Sanzo held his breath, but rather than kiss him on the lips, Gojyo licked his jawline from his chin to his ear. He punctuated the act with a hip thrust.

“Ahh,” Sanzo breathed, knowing his weaknesses were already being exploited.

“Unh, man,” Gojyo said, low, around Sanzo's earlobe, as he rocked their hips and cocks together with quick, intense bursts of denim-and-knit stimulation. And Sanzo's sex-starved body and lonely soul drank in the touch, the atmosphere, the absolute lack of anyone watching> except Gojyo.

He yanked Gojyo's head back by his ponytail and shoved their mouths together. This kiss was rough and grinding and just what Sanzo wanted.

***

“That's it. How's that? Ah, damn, Sanzo ...”

Sanzo buried his nose in the mattress and sucked wide-mouthed at the sheets, scrunching them in his fingers, feeling the burn as Gojyo fucked him from behind. Gojyo knew what he was doing, Sanzo would definitely give him that. Sometimes Sanzo had to be shown what he liked to like it.

Gojyo showed him by wrenching his hips around as he pounded into him, holding hard when even a small shift would make Sanzo groan sharply into the bed. There’d been several positions in the last twenty minutes; Sanzo could barely believe he’d lasted twenty minutes. Seemed Gojyo on his knees could last forever, but any second for Sanzo was going to be too much; he was hair-triggered, the ache in his testicles impossibly acute and poised.

“God, I hope you’re gonna come soon, Sanzo, ‘cause — I g-got stamina but this is pushing it,” Gojyo said, his words harsh and breathless.

“Yeah,” Sanzo said, unable to lie, feeling Gojyo’s sweat dripping onto his back. “Y-yeah.”

“Oh, good,” Gojyo said inanely. Sanzo felt his ass jerked up sharply once, then twice, and then Gojyo’s chest pressing along his back. Gojyo caught Sanzo in the middle with a hooked arm and pulled him closer until they were near-glued together, and the burn in Sanzo’s ass was matched by the burn of sweat smashed and smeared between them.

It was almost an overly intimate gesture, and would have been if it hadn’t been Gojyo doing it. Gojyo made it too easy. He gave Sanzo's cock a sloppy series of yanks and Sanzo held his breath till he was lightheaded—

“Shit! Ah, God,” Gojyo huffed and rolled his hips in a few jerky motions, as ungainly as his hand, but both of them eventually effective. He rocked to the side, heaving Sanzo over with him. A few more strokes from his long fingers pulled Sanzo into a gasping orgasm.

When Sanzo thought he could move again he peeled himself away from Gojyo — unfortunately, it looked like the guy was a cuddler — and dug his cigarettes out of his jacket. He leaned back on the headboard to light one and had a very satisfying first drag.

Gojyo joined him against the headboard a few moments later. In a fit of generosity, Sanzo offered him one of his smokes. Gojyo plucked it out and gave Sanzo a little salute. His hair was all over the place, sticking to his face and sticking out of his ponytail like antennae.

“Izzis a non-smoking room?” Gojyo asked, then blew out a smoky exhalation that said he didn’t much care.

Sanzo took a slow drag. “My company wouldn’t do that to me,” he said after a bit.

They would, however, call at inopportune times. At least the Director would, and she chose that moment to set his phone beeping. Sanzo leaned over to see that it was indeed she, and snorted: apparently irony was the theme of the day. He hit the “silent” button and let it buzz to voicemail. Without further comment he leaned back against the headboard to finish his smoke.

Gojyo was chuckling softly. “Ya know, it’d be nice to have someone pay for all this.” He waved his cigarette-fingers in a circle as if blessing the room with smoke. “But nobody’s after me for anything. I’m as free as freedom.”

“As free as the Chinese government will allow,” Sanzo pointed out.

“Yeah, that too.” Gojyo bent his knees and planted his feet on the bunched sheets, then scratched his ass. Sanzo had gotten a decent look at his body before but took a chance to check it out again; Gojyo managed to be taut and fluid at the same time, with defined muscles but movements that took their own time getting themselves done. “So can ya at least tell me how you came to be an American living in Hong Kong?”

How did people like Gojyo make even pillow-talk easy? Sanzo had never done it before and yet there he was, doing it. “I was sent to school there,” he said, staring at the opposite wall.

“Parents didn't want ya?”

“Tch.” Gojyo had sounded rather sad as he'd said it, and now Sanzo was even catching onto Gojyo's moods. At least his own answer didn't cause him much pain anymore. When he was sober. “My parents are dead.”

“Eh? Well, at least one of mine is dead. Dunno about my dad.” Gojyo smoked and spewed an exhale toward the same wall Sanzo was staring at. “Mom offed herself when Dad took off. I was raised by my brother and the street. No money for school at my place. 'S how I learned to make do with what I get.”

“Ah,” Sanzo said. He had lots of money, and while it made things easier, it didn't make them necessarily better. “I didn't ... have any until my father died. At least I didn't know about it.”

“Eh?” Gojyo said.

Sanzo sighed. “He was a failed Mormon missionary. And a hippie. Then a Buddhist. Mom was Chinese.” More truthfully, his father had come on a teen mission to the Far East to convert the heathen Chinese. But he'd taken one look at the ancient temples, the ones older than Christ and Joseph Smith, and had converted to Buddhism. He'd married a Chinese orphan and converted her to hippieism, and together they'd had baby Genjyo and started their own little western-style Buddhist commune in Communist China, living off the earth and discussing drunken philosophy with the local priests. But he didn't know how to explain that and wasn't quite ready to, anyway. “They got married and started a quiet little farm in the quiet green countryside. She died, he died, turns out his family had money and they were dead, too.”

“And now you just make more money?”

“...Yeah,” Sanzo said.

“Well, you already know what I do.” Gojyo dropped his cigarette into the half-full bottle of water Sanzo had earlier left on the nightstand. “I gotta piss.” He rolled off the bed and strutted to the bathroom.

“Huh,” Sanzo chuckled to himself. That had been sort of painless, at least the pillow-talk part. His ass hurt, but that was a more pleasant, deep ache.

Gojyo soon poked his head out of the bathroom door . “Shit, Sanzo, look at this goddamned shower! It's huge. We are definitely doin' it in here.”

Sanzo's phone vibrated. He picked it up and gave it a quick glance; just the Director again. Well, she'd ordered him to get laid. That meant he was only doing his job, even if he hadn't found Gordon Song. Yet. He laid his warm phone back on the bedside table. A minute or so later his cigarette butt joined Gojyo's in the water bottle, then he joined Gojyo in the bathroom.

Gojyo had already turned the water on in the shower and was fooling with the massaging spray. He grinned when he saw Sanzo.

“Aww, you came. Back for more?”

Sanzo flipped Gojyo the two-fingered bird, then stuck his fingers in the — admittedly huge — shower and tested the water. It was warm.

“Just needed a shower,” he said, and stepped inside.

“You made a funny. Goddamn, the Many Many Good-Luck Cock is a thing of wonder,” Gojyo said. He pushed Sanzo against the marble wall; his mouth on Sanzo's chest was slow and hot, hotter than the water, and his tongue made interesting swirly motions on his way down Sanzo's belly to his cock. By the time Gojyo had shoved a finger up Sanzo's ass, Sanzo was already hard.

And Gojyo was a tiny bit taller, but Sanzo still managed to balance on one leg while Gojyo fucked him against the shower wall, breathing his name between short gasps. That time was quicker than the first, but Sanzo had to walk a little bit gingerly back to the bed when they were done.

And that time Gojyo fell asleep afterwards, wet and face-down on the bed. Sanzo was feeling a bit sluggish but took a chance to check his phone one more time before allowing himself a short nap. There had been three calls by then, all from the Director, and one text. It read, _song seen in yokohama, change your ticket y/y?_

“Shit!” Sanzo said. He texted back _Yes. Send details please, OHO_ , placating her with the “O Honored One.”

He'd sleep on the plane. He poked Gojyo. “Oi. I gotta go.”

***

Sanzo slept four hours of the five from JFK to LAX, and then two more on the Air Japan flight to Tokyo Narita. He spent the rest of the time reading the Director's information on the Song sighting and catching up on his Yokohama and Tokyo accounts, investigating the possibility of any activity that might indicate Song was in Japan to cause more trouble for Ten-Kay, or more specifically, him personally. There was none that he could see, but he had orders at the Company to be alerted if anything popped up.

Once at Narita he opted for the quicker train to Yokohama over the more circuitous car ride; it had by then been nearly a full day since Song had been seen entering Landmark Tower, but that was no reason not to hurry.

And wandering the streets on foot seemed like a decent enough start. He checked his bag at the Breezebay and walked into town, keeping his gait casual but his lookout sharp. Intuition told him — especially remembering that _Sayonara, Sanzo-sama!_ — that Song, or whoever was behind his bizarre behavior, would seek him out eventually. And Japan was the place.

Since he wasn't technically on the clock, Sanzo had opted for more casual jeans and a button-down shirt to canvass the streets. Thus as he strolled past the baseball stadium, he was bait for all the young advertising tissue hawkers that milled about. He tried to ignore and then started to wave off a pretty girl holding out a packet of bright orange tissues at him. But the picture on the package caught his eye and he took it from her; it was printed with a picture of a red-headed animated character that reminded him of Gojyo.

The colored tissues looked like nothing he would ever put near his nose, but there was something about the character's toothy grin that had made him want them. The picture's word-bubble exhorted him to visit one of the local Orange Eagle pharmacies! Low prices!

Sanzo's heart seemed to stop for a second. Once he caught his breath he whipped his head about, searching the Japanese faces around him for the girl who'd handed him the tissues. She was nowhere to be seen, and a quick dart around the intersection showed that nobody else had orange tissues on offer. Neither were there any wandering spirits. There definitely had been when he'd left the hotel.

Sanzo felt his jeans pocket, the one where he carried his phone, grow very warm very quickly. He snatched his phone into his hand; the screen was black and Sanzo thumbed it alive. There were no notifications, no calls, no alerts on his web search-spells. Just his normal phone screensaver and icons staring up at him, and the warmth in his hand. It was impossible, though, that Gojyo should be here.

Sanzo looked at the tissues. There was no phone number. He glanced back at his phone and wasn't surprised when it beeped to indicate an incoming text.

_Hi! You can find me near the East Chinatown gate. G.S._ it said.

The originating number was unfamiliar. The initials could be, well, only one person: Song. It was surely coincidence that Gojyo's family name was Sha.

Sanzo had tried to give Gojyo his number, had after several false starts written it on a slip of paper and held the paper out to him. Gojyo had shaken his drying hair and waved it off. “Nope,” he'd said. “You don't haveta. We'll run into each other again soon, if fate has a say, yeah?”

That was Sanzo's life. Gojyo had left soon after, and Sanzo had headed to the airport as dusk had fallen in New York. Now dusk was falling in Japan, and the advertisers were clearing out and the streets were gradually emptying; Yokohama was businesslike and conservative and the night brought closed shops and quieter streets. Sanzo quickly loaded any protection spells he might need onto app buttons and put his phone in his front pocket. He wished, not for the first time, that he'd had his father's old pistol; they'd taken it away from young Genjyo before shipping him to the South China Sea for school. Not that he could have smuggled it in on the plane, or that it had done Dad any good in the end.

As prepared as he could be, Sanzo lit a cigarette and headed for Yokohama's Chinatown's East Gate, only a short walk away. Convenient for both G.S. and himself.

As Sanzo crossed the gate, he saw that even Chinatown was settling down for the evening. The lights in the souvenir and snack-shops were blinking off, one by one, down the street. Here and there restaurant workers sprayed the sidewalks with water hoses and scraped them with stiff brooms, cleaning up for either closing time or an evening rush. Sanzo heard smatterings of Cantonese.

The spirits were still absent. It took a human voice behind him, speaking English, to make him spin in a rush.

“Mister Sanzo. Well done on the Toudai accounts. I could have used those.”

It was the same flat voice, and when Sanzo turned and looked down, the same dead eyes on the same young man who'd disappeared from Dai Jackson's boardroom.

“Song,” Sanzo said. He fingered his front jeans-pocket slowly. “Just tell me what you want and finish this. I'm bored of it already.”

“I want lots of money,” Song said. He was just out of arms' reach, but not spell-reach. Sanzo slid his phone from his pocket.

“So I take it. What do you want from me?”

Like before, Song began to crackle with golden energy, and Sanzo thumbed his phone on. For a second or two Song's eyes looked ... imploring, even as his voice became all light and playful again.

“Why, I want you! I'm a headhunter.”

His aura flared, and Sanzo was ready this time: when Song turned and took off like lightning, Sanzo activated his search app. He chased Song, running as fast as he could, following the clear spell-trail that zigzagged along the streets and alleys.

Bystanders and workers barely glanced at Sanzo as he dodged them, sprinting after what they saw as absolutely nothing. After a while Sanzo began huffing and puffing and garnering more stares; he was in decent shape, but wished he'd had fewer cigarettes or more sleep or had spent more time at his condo's exercise room as the chase began to go in circles, all still within Chinatown. He was getting closer, however, if his spell was working as well as it seemed to be.

Sanzo saw the trail ahead cut a hard right into what looked like a building. When he reached the turn, he saw a noodle shop with a CLOSED sign but a shuddering door that had obviously just swung shut — “Fine J Noodle,” the sign in the window said — and Sanzo tried the door. It was unlocked, and Sanzo took a deep breath and opened it.

Inside the shop it was dark, with only the light from a neon sign across the street streaking through the partially open curtains. The residual smell of Chinese noodles was oddly soothing.

Song stood only a meter or so away, stock-still, staring at Sanzo with brown eyes that looked oddly golden in the scant light. As quickly as he could, Sanzo held up the phone and thumbed the app for an unbinding sutra. Whatever held Song was exceptionally strong; the words didn't need to be spoken, but Sanzo mumbled them as they scrolled in hopes that their strength might be intensified somehow. “Hatsu. Mei.”

Song's body hitched up like it was hung on strings the moment Sanzo started the app. As Sanzo read, Song began to sag, and when the ten-second sutra was finished, he was kneeling on the floor.

He looked up at Sanzo and his face crumpled. “I'm so, so sorry, mister. Really, I—”

Sanzo sagged a little, too, as a lot of tension drained out of him in a hurry. “Can it. Just tell me what's happening.”

“I was trying so hard not to do it, but he made me — it was Go—”

“Shut up, idiot!” another voice shrieked. A fist appeared out of the darkness and cold-cocked Song on the side of the head. Song fell to the side, only unconscious, Sanzo hoped. Sanzo swiped his thumb to his camera app and ignited the flash, trying to see who the fist belonged to. He briefly saw a swing of long red hair, and then a mist was sprayed into his face, the droplets stinging in his eyes and bitter on his tongue. Sanzo was able to hold onto consciousness for only a few more seconds.

***

Sanzo awoke, coughing, to a drowning sensation and the sound of dripping water. His head buzzed with what felt like spirit energy, and he couldn't see a thing. After a moment or two more he realized that the water was not only dripping, he was lying in it, an inch or so of it over what felt like rock or concrete. He was prone with his head turned to the side just enough to half-breathe.

He tried to lift his head out of it. But he couldn't. His neck was paralyzed or something. So was the rest of him; he couldn't seem to move a single wet muscle.

There was the sound of a splashing step, and the water next to his face sloshed.

“So,” a male voice said to him in Cantonese, from somewhere above the foot. “Do you admit now that I'm good enough to beat you?”

“Whub the fub,” Sanzo said, then coughed out another mouthful of the dank water in which he sprawled. “Who the hell are you?”

“I can't believe you don't remember me! I'm your old friend and rival from school, Upperclassman Sanzo Genjyo.”

“Ribal?” Sanzo coughed again, trying to forestall his rising panic at being stuck in water that he could hardly help but breathe. He searched his brain databanks and couldn't find a thing. “Didn't hab one.”

“You arrogant bastard. Are you telling me that you're still too good to acknowledge me? I, who have shown you both businesswise and otherwise that I am now your superior? Look about you!”

The person shone a light about the room, and suddenly the source of the spirit energy was visible. Ghosts flitted about the room in circles, seemingly in orbits that centered upon him. The spirit mob was comprised of ghosts of all ages and sizes and apparitional abilities; some were white and nearly opaque, others were able to manifest as nothing more than black shadows. The light flashed off and the ghosts disappeared from view. Still, he knew they’d been set on him by the Chinese curse-signature he'd recognized even in London. He wished he had use of his hands and his phone, but mostly that he could get _off the goddamned floor._ He coughed up another accidental mouthful of malodorous water.

“I even researched your family,” the voice said, smug but still unidentifiable. “Didn't your mother die this way, poisoned and drowned? I'll bet you used to have nightmares about it.”

Sanzo had never told anybody that, not a single soul. She'd been bitten by a poisonous snake and died within minutes, face-down in a rice paddy. Shit, but that must have sucked, and Sanzo hated thinking about it. Still, it was the most unremarkable and rural young death she could have possibly had, and Sanzo was far from his old province, the little rice farm in the valleys. Whoever this motherfucker was, he'd been thorough.

“Nah,” he said.

“Huh,” the man said, as if it was unimportant. “Well, anyway, I don't want you to die. I want you to join me. Surely you can see the benefit? I've shown you my true power. You saw how easily I overtook Hyumaoh. You saw how I was able to send Toudai into a financial panic without hardly trying. And now you see my ability to utilize the supernatural. Together, we will be unstoppable.”

Well, that explained a few things. Sanzo was even more tired of this than he'd been before. Did this guy really think those were Sanzo's priorities? Just because he was exceptionally good at something didn't mean he did it wholeheartedly. He just did well at things because he could. “Orange Eagle?” Sanzo said, attempting a dismissive voice though his throat was already sore from choking.

“See! You have noticed me. So join me! Then I, Go Dougan, will give you the antidote and free you from this nightmare. Hong Kong, London, and New York will bow down before us, just you—”

“Go Dougab?” Sanzo interrupted, as loudly as he could. It took him only a half-second more to remember: Dougan was the little Chinese kid who'd used to follow him around school now and then, the one who'd dyed his hair blond to look more like Sanzo, the one who'd always been trying to compare their stupid fucking test scores, like they were the most important things in the world. He spat again. “Why you — you always were a goddamned little weasel.”

“What?” There was that shrieking little voice, the one Sanzo remembered and hated from long ago. “I'll show you— You'll die here unless you take that back! They'll find you in the morning. I have your phone— I'll take everything that's yours—”

“Weaseb,” Sanzo said around a mouthful of water. There was a flash of light in the ... wherever they were. Strange.

“Oooh, you're gonna regret that. Ack-ggggh!”

A second after Dougan emitted that strange, choked noise, there was another sweep of light and a giant splash. Sanzo spent the next ten seconds coughing out the water from that, and then he heard a footstep or two. Something touched his shoulder and rolled him over. Sanzo looked up and human features grotesquely formed by an upturned flashlight resolved themselves into Gojyo's face.

“Oi! Well, here we are.”

“Asshole! That shit — coff — skipped two generations,” Sanzo said. He may have vaguely heard Gojyo mutter “what the hell does that mean?” before he passed out again.

***

Sanzo stumbled into his apartment, dropped his bag, and shut the door. For once in his adult life he wanted to be home for a good, long while. He didn't even want a smoke; he just wanted to sleep. He shed his clothing on the way to the bedroom, and by the time he fell onto his soft, soft bed, he was wearing nothing and clutching only his smartphone.

He'd only lain face-down in his pillow for a few blessed seconds before the phone beeped. Somehow it had survived its brief dousing, thanks to Gojyo. Thanks for a lot of things to Gojyo, Sanzo supposed.

“Fuck,” Sanzo said anyway and dragged his phone-hand up to his face so he could read the incoming text. It was from Director Bosatsu.

_sanzo dearest, you home? drinks at kou's at eight and dont you dare ignore me you owe me_ it said.

“Fuck,” he said again.

He hadn't slept since he'd been knocked cold a second time by that bastard weasel Dougan's poison in the basement of Fine J Noodle. Gojyo had awoken him upstairs with a broth that smelled terrible but tasted great.

“Super Good Blessing All Purpose Antidote,” Gojyo had told him. “Left out the virgin bear's blood, seeing as you're a vegetarian and all, but it should work anyway. I washed the knife, too.” The Many Many Good-Luck Knife had been used to stab the hell out of Go Dougan.

Upon first waking, Sanzo had been ready to blame Gojyo for his capture and his own failed intuition for letting him get caught. Why else would Gojyo have been in Japan, when Sanzo had left him in New York, if he wasn’t part of the problem? Of course Gojyo had an explanation.

“So my brother owns this place and I came for a visit. Not a crime, man,” he'd said. “And I walk in to see if my bro's here, and there's this unconscious kid in the dining room.”

Then Gojyo'd called some guys he knew in Yokohama Chinatown, guys who owed him some favors, to come take away the body and dispose of it carefully.

“Now that's a crime,” Sanzo had pointed out.

Gojyo had shrugged. “You done with this guy or what?”

“Yeah, I'm done,” Sanzo had said. Only an hour or so later the news had reported the apparent murder in Japan of Go Dougan, CEO of Hong-Kong based Orange Eagle LTD. It was supposed that organized crime was responsible for the murder, but there were no suspects.

The Director had been ecstatic to receive Sanzo's call to say merely that shit was dealt with and he was coming home. She'd been so ecstatic, in fact, that she'd been of some assistance with another matter: Song. Gojyo had revived him as well.

“I was a mail clerk,” Song had told them. He'd showed them the letter, on bright orange paper, that Dougan had used to entrap him. The signature had faded away when the spell had been destroyed. Song was sniffling with apology but had managed to put away several bowls of Gojyo's noodles despite his sorrow. “I'll disappear, I swear. I'm so happy that asswipe's dead that I'll never say a word.”

“Aww, Sanzo, help a kid out?” Gojyo had implored.

“Lemme talk to my boss,” Sanzo had said.

The Director was no magician, but she had the power at her disposal to clear information and to call off searches. And she could conjure up a one-way ticket to New York in a new identity, since Song had expressed an interest in meeting Gojyo's friend Hakkai, who was reputed to be nearly as good a cook as Gojyo.

Sanzo rolled over in his soft, soft bed, flinging his forearm across his eyes to block out the daylight beaming cheerfully through his curtains. Sometimes Sanzo wondered if his parents' karma was ever to leave his ass alone. Perhaps if they'd still been alive, Sanzo would be living a very boring and rural sort of life. He missed them a lot, sometimes.

His phone beeped again and Sanzo rolled his eyes at its technologically uncaring face. This time the text was from an unfamiliar number.

_this is Gojyo. so I called my phone from urs when u were out so I'd have ur number. I'm back home if u ever want 2 get 2gether._

Sneaky sonofabitch. Sanzo thought about that for a moment. Then he had an idea. _How would you like to go out for drinks at a really nice place?_ he texted back.

 

**End.**

Thanks for reading! All comments, concrit, flames, love, are welcomed.


End file.
